‘Paltry’ insurance payouts irks rain-affected farmers, Centre denies claims -Zia Haq

-Hindustan Times

Farm-insurance claims have risen due to extensive crop damage caused by extreme weather conditions this year, but some farmers are angry at being given a pittance as compensation under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana.

Krushna Raut, a farmer in Maharashtra’s Parbhani district, stared in disbelief at a message on his mobile phone, which showed 1.76 had been transferred to his bank account towards his crop-insurance claim. He first thought it was a mistake, but the district’s insurance authorities told him that was all they owed him, he said.

This year, the monsoon dumped heavy rainfall in several states in September, a month when the rainy-bearing system usually starts retreating. The showers caught farmers like Raut from the district’s Dhasala village unaware, ruining harvest-ready crops.

Farm-insurance claims have risen due to extensive crop damage caused by extreme weather conditions this year, but some farmers are angry at being given a pittance as compensation under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, a federal subsidised crop insurance scheme launched in 2016 after simplifying a myriad of weather-based insurance plans.

In a country already facing serious threats to agriculture from extreme weather due to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nearly 15 million farmers opted for the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana during kharif or summer sown-season of 2021.

Please click here to read more.